Automotive lighting makers Ta Yih Industrial Co Ltd (大億) yesterday said it aims to secure more orders from Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) NV to sustain its long-term growth, as the domestic market is almost saturated.
“We expect to reach out to more foreign customers [through collaborations with FCA],” Ta Yih spokesman Wang Hung-chi (王宏基) told an investors’ conference in Taipei, citing Mexico and Brazil as the company’s next target markets.
The company last year supplied automotive lighting components for FCA’s eight new models, making up less than 20 percent of the customer’s lighting items, Ta Yih said.
Including FCA, revenue generated by the company’s US clients accounted for 14 percent of its sales for the whole of last year, while those from Japanese customers, such as Mazda Motor Corp, made up 25 percent, company data showed.
Tainan-based Ta Yih, which makes original equipment manufacturing (OEM) components used in new cars, sells more than half of its products in the local market.
“Annual sales in Taiwan’s new car market generally stay at about 400,000 units,” Wang said, adding that the firm has already secured a larger share in the domestic automaker supply chains.
Because of a saturated local market, the company plans to sustain revenue growth by producing additional automotive LED lighting products for Taiwanese automakers, Ta Yih said.
The company posted net profit of NT$499.36 million (US$17.07 million) last year, flat from the previous year’s NT$497.31 million, or an increase in earnings per share from NT$6.52 to NT$6.55, while sales grew 5 percent to NT$6.2 billion from NT$5.9 billion.
Meanwhile, TYC Brother Industrial Co (堤維西), a spin-off of Ta Yih’s aftermarket (AM) business, is relatively conservative about its business this year, mainly due to the volatility of foreign-exchange rates.
Unlike the OEM sector, the AM market is affected by foreign-exchange rates and weather conditions, Weng said, declining to elaborate on the company’s business outlook.
Sales edged up 0.6 percent annually to NT$16.06 billion from NT$15.96 billion, but gross margin over the period slid from 24.51 percent to 21.82 percent, causing net profit to plunge by 33.1 percent to NT$660.06 million from NT$987.37 million, while earnings per share fell to NT$2.12 from NT$3.17, data showed.
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